Planned programs of exercise have long been followed by persons training for athletic events of various types or pursuing a course of treatment for the rehabilitation of an illness, injury or the like. Many such planned programs of exercise have employed aids which have, in recent years, come to take the form of various apparatus or machines which facilitate the planned programs of exercise. Such apparatus, machines and methods have grown out of various concepts and studies regarding physiology and physiological development and function.
One type of apparatus and method which has been used with significant success is full range exercise such as is possible, for example, through use of the apparatus of Jones, U.S. Pat. No. 3,858,873. "Full range" exercise as used with reference to such an apparatus and method, and as used in the description which follows, is a defined term. The defined term "full range exercise" refers to exercise having positive work; negative work; rotary form movement; stretching; prestretching; automatically variable, balanced, direct resistance; resistance in the position of full muscular contraction; and unrestricted speed of movement. The interested reader is referred to available publications for further explication of these characteristic features of full range exercise.
It is recognized, however, that not all exercise need be full range exercise as here defined. More specifically, certain exercise movements are compound movements which cannot attain the characteristics of full range exercise as listed briefly above due to the presence of "lock out" positions and non-rotary movements. Such exercise may, for example, be realized through the use of apparatus such as that disclosed in Mazman U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,599.
The general field of such exercise and related apparatus and methods is here referred to as "exercise physiology". The field of exercise physiology is related to sports medicine, being the field of medical study which is particularly directed to athletic sports and the like. While it has become possible, within these fields, to develop exercise programs which apply methods and apparatus of the types briefly mentioned above with greater specificity than has been possible heretofore, exercise physiology and related areas of sports medicine have continued to be inherently imprecise. A major difficulty in accomplishing precise application of exercising programs has been in the difficulty of monitoring, directing and recording physiological performance.